The Pros and Many Cons of Single-Vendor Purchasing

Discover the true cost of relying on a single vendor for pharmacy purchases. Read more.

For some pharmacies, you can never have too many eggs in one basket. Using a single vendor for all purchases may seem easy: review one catalog with one set of prices and then send one purchase order for all the products they need. That’s a simple summary of a far more challenging approach.

The True Cost of Purchasing Through a Single Vendor

“Convenience” is the most common reason pharmacy professionals give for only purchasing through a single vendor. Given the complexity of procurement, that’s understandable. 

The pharmacy purchasing ecosystem is a web of product listings, prices, categories, codes, quantities and other information. It’s hard enough to shuffle through all that data in one catalog. With so many vendors on the market, each using a different catalog and purchasing interface, pharmacy teams stand to lose hours shopping around. No one has the luxury of time (especially with rising staff shortages).

Yet, at the same time, pharmacies are paying for this supposed convenience. Relying on a single vendor also means that the vendor controls your pricing. You’re subject to its business decisions, which may not align with your goals and strategy. That vendor’s pricing may be profitable for the vendor but not necessarily align with the market.

Relying on a single vendor also means pharmacies must trust another company’s business intelligence. The vendor may furnish reports on savings and performance. But they’re making all the calculations and determining which metrics you see. Many vendors share these reports at the end of the quarter. That doesn’t allow pharmacies to adjust their purchasing strategy effectively, and it delays spotting issues and errors. Read more >